This invention relates generally to institutional laundry equipment, and has particular reference to a novel wall adapter that permits clean room use of a tilt type washer-extractor machine.
In many institutions, and in hospitals in particular, the laundry area is divided into a laundry receiving or soiled laundry room and a clean laundry room. These rooms are separated by a common wall in which a washer-extractor machine is incorporated, the machine having a loading door in the soiled room and an unloading door in the clean room whereby cross infection is prevented insofar as possible. This kind of prior art laundry arrangement is shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,577,752 and 3,597,943, owned by the assignee of the present invention, and also in U.S. Pat. No. 3,318,122.
More recently, tilt type washer-extractor machines have been developed in which the wash cylinder is designed to be moved into a rearwardly tilted position for loading, into a horizontal position for washing and extracting, and into a forwardly tilted position for unloading. These machines have a number of advantages, particularly with respect to the ease of loading and unloading. However, because of the tilting action of the cylinder and the fact that there is only one access door, the machines have not heretofore been used in hospitals even though they have been well accepted for industrial applications. There exists, therefore, a need for a means to enable the advantageous tilt type machine to be used in hospital laundry areas where there are separate soiled laundry and clean laundry rooms.